This large-format facsimile edition, with extended Introduction, bibliography, textual notes, and portraits, reproduces the extant works, to date, of the 17th-century poet, 'Ephelia'. By tradition, the identity of 'Ephelia' has been a long-contested debate in English letters. This edition's editor has culled evidence from the 'Ephelia' texts and from contemporary sources to show that the most forceful candidate, to date, is the book's own dedicatee, the brisk and jolly Mary ('Mall') Villiers, later Stuart, Duchess of Richmond & Lennox (1622-1685, aka "the Butterfly"). Well practiced in the arts of court intrigue, Lady Mary was a dazzling red-haired beauty at the Stuart court and a faithful ally of Charles II; she was judged by her contemporaries to be one of the wittiest and most amusing women of her century. Written from the sightlines of a Stuart court insider, her poems engage with hot political crises of the day (the Popish Plot and the Monmouth Rebellion), as well as with her own coterie world of sinners, beauties, deceitful lovers, luckless suitors, royal mistresses, fashionistas, and viragoes.

"... the question of Ephelia authorship has been the subject of extensive scholarly debate, which has yielded intriguing results, if not a highly probable identification." Reading Early Modern Women, 1550-1700, eds Helen Ostovich & Elizabeth Sauer (London & NY: Routledge, 2004), p 362.

"Some Ephelia scholars have wondered if she was a man, or a group of men and women, hiding behind not just a pseudonym but a skirt... It seems just that 'Mall' Villiers will now get her due, and be rightfully acknowledged, thanks to Mulvihill, in such official places as the forthcoming third edition of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and the authoritative ESTC (now online, for library subscribers)." Steve King, Today In Literature (November 23rd, 2004, 2005); http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/ephelia.asp

"In the judgment of some bibliophiles and area specialists, the Villiers case for ?Ephelia? is an exciting new attribution in the canon of early-modern English poetry, and Mulvihill is to be commended for enviably cracking such a complex case, owing to her broad multimedia methodology." Philip Milito (Berg Collection, NYPL), Seventeenth-Century News (Spring-Summer, 2004), pp 119-123.

Introductory Essay, with extended biblio; A Poem to His Sacred Majesty, on the Plot, Written by a Gentlewoman (brs., 1678); A Poem as it was Presented to His Sacred Majesty, on the Discovery of the Plott, Written by a Lady of Quality (brs., 1679), with printer's ornament (illustrated woodcut factotum); Female Poems On several Occasions. Written by Ephelia (octavo, 1679); Advice to His Grace (brs., c. June, 1681); Appendices: Appendix A. Two portraits of Lady Mary Villiers, by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (c. 1630s); Appendix B. 'A funerall Elegie on Sr. Thomas Isham Barronet' (c. 9 August 1681; Nottingham Library), with an enlarged image of the manuscript's armorial watermark; Appendix C. Title page, Female Poems On Several Occasions. Written by Ephelia. The Second Edition, with Large Additions (octavo, 1682).